Sooner or later we all have the task of reconciling our childhood pasts with an adult present. Most do it by living through the ordeals, then promptly forgetting the painful slings and arrows, or, as Freud would have it, by burying the past in a more or less comfortable neurosis we learn to live with this side of a more destructive psychosis.

In “The Sonderman Constellation,” R.E. Prindle manages to pull us through the ordeal of childhood and early manhood kicking and screaming at each of the forces that somehow make us what we are. The novel is a Bildungsroman that drives full speed through a Freudian slash Jungian analysis of his early years in a fictional account of what made the man who he is today.

Even though the author disclaims a direct relationship the various personas found between the lines, the masks are familiar ones, which makes the story ring true. Even though the canvas is framed within the terms of the various psychologies of both Freud and Jung, the picture is a a large one, showing a subtle mind at work.

At times, I wish that Prindle had simply told us the story without the constant battering of Jungian terminology. It is a compelling story that could stand on its own without psychoanalyzing each step of the way. Hesse did this over and over again in each of his novels, even though he was writing within a similar Jungian framework. However, it does give us an interesting account of a strong self-analysis that is quite remarkable.

Yet, I must admit the story is more than a simple case-study. The fictional writing is strong enough to overcome what might seem to be an uncomfortable dragging by the hooks of psychological terminology. The “Constellation” of the story is what one might call in Jungian terms, a “complex” – all those events of a life that center around a certain problem, or in this case a person, who happens to be the “Sonderman.”

Sonderman is an obsession of sorts, a boy, and later a man who both truly is and truly symbolizes a constellation about which the narrator’s life circles. There are other “constellations” or personas in this story, all all of them meet and sometimes collide like wandering stars as the story turns upon its fictional orbits. We are drawn along by the gravitational vortices of these lives and hopefully come out the other end of this intergalactic worm-hole through a life of a novel the better for the ride.

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INDEX OF SHORT STORIES
1. All The Way From China
2. Angeline Gower
3. Boulevard of Broken Dreams, The
4. Highway 101
5. Hole In Black Mountain, The
6. Hole In The Sky, The
7. In Darkest America
8. Magic Shop, The
9. Midnight Ride Of Dewey Trueman, The
10. Out Of Africa
11. Price Of Freedom, The

My novel The Sonderman Constellation is now available from iUniverse for 14.95. Also available from amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, alibris and other online sellers. Check it out.

Review Of Sonderman Constellation by Kimi Foos

My favorite and one of the most relevant lines in this book, "I decided self-help would be cheaper and less humiliating." begins the saga of our unnamed narrator. The subject of this book was truly tormented, if only in his own mind. Were these just a series of unfortunate coincidences magnified in his adolescent mind, or were there truly attempts made on his life? In either case, this story shows that Adolescence is indeed brutal.
Despite his best efforts, growing up was not the idyllic Tom Sawyer existence he had hoped for and tried so desperately to achieve, but our young subject had a persistence, a never say die attitude. As our narrator thoroughly examines each episode of his formative years to find the clues to his fixation and induce his self-therapy, he shows us proof positive how much those years shape and affect us and in turn, our future.
Like a jigsaw puzzle, he pieces together the incidents of his boyhood until the picture becomes clear. Through sharp, revealing self-exposure, revelations and astute observations our narrator truly comes to know himself and his Animus, Sonderman, inside out.
As the source of the fixation is revealed, the story really takes hold as our narrator triumphs time and time again over his tormentors.
We as readers are given an insightful introduction to mythology, psychology and historical concepts along the way. Our author acting as our narrator sees the relation of things throughout the centuries. He's not afraid to give us his own take on centuries old ideas and theories.
This book may make most everyone want to examine their own past in search of the source of their adolescent trauma, the fixation and exorcise it in this way.
It was good to see that because of his strong personality, morality prevailed even with a role model (Animus) such as Sonderman.